Evolution has already been thoroughly discussed and agreed upon in this thread. Also, if you skim through the other religion related threads you will find plenty I have posted to back up my beliefs. I don’t want to repost all that, so if you are that intent on reading my evidence, and I don’t think you are; you were just trying to discredit my argument, you can find it there.
Sigh. What I was getting at was that the true spirit of debate is persuasion, not mockery. Accusing me of “pulling an explanation out of my ass” isn’t really good debating form.
@danielsangeo: I actually would ascribe to the breathing universe theory if it hadn’t been convincingly disproven in an astrophysics class I took last year. The contents of the universe are definitely decelerating as they expand, and the gist of the argument against the breathing universe was that if you estimate the mass of the universe (including dark matter) and calculate the gravitational force of said mass, the accumulative gravitational force will never be enough to overcome the acceleration of the outward expansion, meaning that the universe will expand forever. I don’t remember the nuts and bolts of the entire proof, but the estimation of mass and things were all pretty legitimate. I remember being completely convinced, and that’s extremely rare for me.
The other thing I’m confused about in your post is that I was under the impression that it’s generally accepted that it isn’t space itself that expands, but the contents of the universe; that is, all of the stars and other mass are accelerating away from the point of the big bang, but there’s a definite medium into which it’s expanding, and that medium is space, which continues infinitely in all directions. It would stand to reason, then, that in the breathing universe theory, that space would still be there as the universe contracts and undergoes another big bang. So doesn’t your belief in the breathing universe theory contradict your statement that “there was no before?”
Read this again, specifically the underlined part.
The pulling out of your ass part is referring to the whole Big Bang = Creator = God. Garth is pointing out that claiming something supernatural caused the Big Bang instead of just saying “we don’t know” is pulling something out of your ass.
“We can’t explain how it happened, so we’ll assume that a supreme being is at work”
That has been the logic of humanity for millennium. Only recently has science and logical reason began taking the reins and explaining how things have come to be. A whole library of remains, carbon dated up to around 8 millions years ago, has nearly every stage of evolution of man from chimpanzee, to a bipedal ape, to a slightly taller ape, to a somewhat hairy man. A hundred years ago, they would have called us insane for suggesting such a thing. They did exactly that to Darwin. Even now, there’s those who have the same mindset of those over a hundred years ago, refusing to let humanity move forward with logic and reason because of their ancient beliefs that they hold dear to them.
As for the Big Bang theory: It happened far too long ago to have any physical evidence, but in all honesty I don’t really care. But just because it can’t explained by modern science, like evolution a hundred years ago, doesn’t mean it’s ok to come up with wild stories about supreme beings creating the universe out of nothing. It causes human knowledge to stray from logic.
The same can be said of supreme beings and their origins. For if supreme beings had always been here, is it not just as safe to assume that the universe could also have always been here?
And I am attempting to persuade you through mockery. “Pulling an explanation out of your ass” seems like the simplest way of stating my point and smashing yours. Besides, your not here because you truly think you can convince me of religion (and neither am I for that matter), your here because maybe you want to mock me, or maybe you want to help expel doubts in your own beliefs, but whatever your motive is, it isn’t convincing other people of your beliefs, because we both know that’s not gonna happen.
Also, please edit your last post, you accidently said @garthbartin.
I think you were replying to me.
The contents of the universe do not “expand into space”. There would be no “space” when it contracts. The universe is boundary-less but finite, like the circumference of a circle; you can travel forever around the circumference of the circle and never reach an “end”. Travel in a single direction and, eventually, you’ll end up where you started because, like the surface of the Earth, space itself is curved. There is no end to the universe, but it is finite, like the circle.
When the universe (and space itself) collapses, then time ceases. The reason I use “before” or “after” in quotes is because these concepts get murky in these extremities of time. There is no before, but the Big Bang is caused by the Big Crunch, like coming back to the same point of the circle.
Yes, this is an extremely difficult concept and I’m not even sure if I understand it. There was no “before” the Big Bang because…well, look at this alphabet:
…WXYZABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ…
In the “breathing universe” hypothesis:
What’s after Z? “A”.
What’s before “A”? “Z”.
Z causes A, but A could be said to eventually cause Z.
That’s the hypothesis, anyway. Again, I’m probably wrong.
As for dark matter: Not much is currently known about it and it’s a fool’s errand, currently, to try to estimate the mass of the universe until we understand dark matter’s characteristics. Because, now, we’re guessing.
And I don’t really like guessing.
The “breathing universe” hypothesis is also a guess. But it’s the best guess I currently have with my current level of understanding…which is, admittedly, extremely little.
To say that we KNOW what caused anything in this universe is like saying that an ant knows about the surface of Europa.
At least the Big Bang theory has observable evidence for it…which is more than I can say about the various creation stories.
(I currently like the “Great Green Arkleseizure” creation story. I find it humorous and with just as much evidence for it as any other creation story.)
Which is why I pretty clearly stated “I choose to believe” rather than “the absolute truth of everything is.” And emphasizing that underlined part isn’t really the best move you could make. After all, theoretical evidence still isn’t evidence. “Science might prove this some day” is, ultimately, the same thing as saying “science has no proof of this.”
@Garth: You’re right in saying that I’m not here to convince anyone that my point of view is right. I’m here because other people’s points of view genuinely interest me, and my own beliefs constantly adapt in the face of evidence. Not two years ago I was a stone cold atheist.
EDIT: @Daniel: ah, the raisin cake model. Sorry, I’d forgotten about it… I definitely concede some of the points you make, then (providing that the model in fact holds). But I should say that, while the means to understand Dark Matter’s nature are definitely beyond our grasp at the moment, we can still reliably estimate the amount of it in the universe. I don’t remember the fancy name off the top of my head, but we can calculate how much the light coming from a distant star has curved due to the effects of gravity. If there is no observable mass between the star and point from which we observe the light, then the gravitational bending of the light’s path must have been due to dark matter, the exact mass of which we can calculate from the curvature of the light’s trajectory. If I’m not mistaken, this is actually the exact reason why dark matter was first theorized.
I am not religious in any sense, but I don’t see why creationism and evolutionary theory have to be mutually exclusive. Creationists think that god put life on earth. Evolution states that all living things have a common ancestor, it doesn’t deal with the origin of life. What says that a god didn’t create life, and from there it evolved, or that evolution is driven by a god? Surely you can’t argue that evolution can’t exist because of a strict interpretation of the bible, because to do so would be hypocritical because to follow the bible to the word is absurd, especially in this day and age of technology, enlightenment and human rights.
So, let me break it down in a nutshell:
Question: “What caused the Big Bang?”
Answer: “I don’t know.”
Exactly.
I think Deathmonkey and other have explained my point even better than me. You don’t understand what occurred before the big bang so you immediately jump on the nearest bandwagon with a simple but unbacked explanation.
Say I ordered some computer parts online and instead of my package arriving I received a box full of cockatoos.
Here is religious logic:
Why this makes no sense. I know, it’s a message from God!! He’s telling me my sole purpose in life is raising cockatoos!!!
Here is scientific logic:
Why this makes no sense. I think I will call UPS and ask them what happened with my package and in the meantime I will try to find whoever sent me these cockatoos.
This may not be the best metaphor, but it should be able to get the idea across with plenty of mocking.
On a more serious note,
You can’t stand living in a world where everything isn’t already explained, and that’s why you were unable to remain atheist, that’s why there are so many religious people, that’s why religion exists in the first place. It’s natural of the human brain to want to know everything and to think it knows everything, but the simple truth is we don’t know everything, and we never will. The best we can do is to explain what we can and understand that there are things we can’t yet explain and things we may never explain.
Look up Richard Feynman, he was a brilliant man. His autobiography, Surely You’re Joking Mr. Feynman, is intriguing and entertaining, but it doesn’t address his philosophical/scientific views very much.
Then why the hell are you telling us you do know?
What happen when Evolution happen on Creation?
I didn’t say I know. I said I believe. I have countless ideas about numerous things, many of which are mutually exclusive and directly contradict each other. If I were to let all of these ideas run around in my head, I wouldn’t have opinions. So instead, I distill all of the ideas down into a single, highly mutable point of view, allowing my conscience and my gut feelings to guide me in its creation. In the end, after all of the ideas have been reconciled, my beliefs include a higher power of some sort, and I choose to accept that.
The fact that you’re able to form opinions means that you’ve undergone the same process, and for whatever reason, your end result doesn’t include a higher power.
I’m not certain why you’re attacking me; it’s not as though I’ve done anything to you.
I’m just curious how you arrived at this “higher power” belief. What led you to that?
Because I’m bored and tired. 
Night all.
for the religious supporters allow me to show you exibit ‘A’ also refered to as proof or providing evidence… please use credible documents like this to defend yourselves and faith from the hoard of infidels attacking you
Please note:
The bible or religious documents DO NOT COUNT
Which is the same thing as saying “The logical/reasonable thing to do is to withhold judgment.” That’s all we’re saying.
By the way, what’s the difference between saying “Science has no proof of this” and “There is no proof of this?”
I don’t care what you are ,it’s just there is a lot of attacks against religions lately in this forum
Yeah, but that’s just because religion is widely considered to be the root of all evil on this planet. Thousands of years of religious conflicts with billions of victims, having left tons and tons of evidence support that claim (the latest being the 9/11 attacks and the suicide bombings in Iraq), while the religious claim that “atheism” is the root of all evil is contradicted by the fact that the most peaceful nations on this planet are those with the largest percentage of atheists in their population.
So scepticism against religion might be somewhat justified. At least for a free thinking individual. I am aware that this definition does not apply to seriously religious people.
If questioning the claims of religion is “attacking”, then science must be getting it from all fronts, including from fellow scientists. :rolleyes:
I have seen MUCH MORE vicious “attacks” against almost any other subject without anyone batting an eye, yet, if someone even dares to do anything close to that with religion, people fall on the fainting couch.
What gives?